


The Once and Future King

by SakuraKatana



Series: The World's Epilogue [1]
Category: The Cornetto Trilogy, The World's End (2013)
Genre: Explicit Language, Gen, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-26 20:44:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/970103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SakuraKatana/pseuds/SakuraKatana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gary King has stumbled upon the chance to begin a new life, but he's not sure what to do with it.<br/>It's a long road from the World's End to the Rising Sun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Wanderer

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is nearly finished, but I'm posting it in three installments because otherwise it would be too long. I hope you enjoy my take on what happened to Gary (with appearances from other characters) between the destruction of Newton Haven and the stop at the Rising Sun.

“Gary.”

There are hands on his shoulders, shaking him.

“Gary, wake up.”

His mouth manages to mumble the words, “Five more minutes.”

A hard slap to the side of the head gets him sitting upright. “Ow!” 

It was a familiar slap, and its deliverer is crouched in front of him. “Sam? What are you – oh, _shit._ ”

“Good, you remember,” says Sam, and helps him to his feet.

As soon as Gary is vertical, the pain rushes to his head. And his back. And his feet and hands. Really every part of his body, which he is more aware is forty years old than he ever has been before. “Fuck.” 

They – he, Sam, Andy, and Steven – are standing on the hill where they had passed out the night before as soon as the adrenaline wore off, the hill that used to overlook Newton Haven. Now it overlooks the ruins of Newton Haven, but the broken shell of a town can hardly be seen through the thick, reddish smoke. “Fuck!”

“That about sums it up,” says Andy.

The four stare out into the smoke as if somehow, now that they’re looking at it, it will do something interesting. The pain of lost friends and family mixes with the physical aches from drinking and fighting. Gary is the first to avert his gaze. He looks at his hands, still stained blue with blank blood. Some of it could be from Blank Gary.

“Fuckin’ hangovers,” says Andy, breaking the silence. “I think if I felt as much like shit last night as I do now I might have let them replace me.”

“What do we do now?” Sam says. She is less sore than the three remaining musketeers, but more in shock. She is the only one of them who lost a brother, rather than a brother in arms.

“Walk it off?” Gary suggests.

“Walk back to London?” Steven says incredulously. 

Gary shrugs.

Andy sighs. “Can anyone come up with a better idea?”

No one can, though not for lack of trying. When it becomes clear what they’re going to do, Steven takes charge. “Alright, everyone. Stretch out, limber up as much as you can. We’ve got a long walk ahead of us, and God knows we’re not as young as we used to be.”

Copying Steven’s arm stretches, some of them definitely learned at the gym, Gary says, “Would make a lot of sense if your girlfriend turned out to be a blank, wouldn’t it?”

Steven moves on to his quadriceps, standing on one leg with the other pulled behind him. “What are you talking about?”

Andy pitches in, “Yeah, a twenty-six year old fitness instructor would be about a hundred times more likely to have sex with you if she was programmed to.”

“Fuck off,” Steven retorts, then quickly adds, “I’d still leave her in a heartbeat for you, Sam.”

Sam rolls her eyes, but a small smile melts a bit of the grief off her face.

Gary attempts the quadricep stretch and nearly falls over. He’d guess the fitness instructor is the real deal, but he is reminded of the time when Steven went to Glasgow and came back claiming to have shagged a model. The girl in the picture he showed around as evidence turned out to be his cousin, and Gary showed her around when she came to visit the next summer. Gary grins. “Hey Stevie, remember when – “

He stops. His face falls. The smoke around them causes the image of Steven's cousin to fade out until it disappears.

“Gary?” This time it’s Andy calling him to join the class.

“They left,” Gary says. “The Network left.”

“They did; they left the planet. They went home,” Andy says gently. “And now it’s time for us to go home.”

Gary looks Andy in the eyes. “What happened to the other penetration points?”

This time nobody laughs at the word “penetration.”  
______

The smoke is less thick by the time they reach London, but it’s still there, ominously obscuring the night sky as they approach the city. From the looks of the skyline, it seems like London must have a similar percentage of casualties to Newton Haven. However, most of the damage is to property and possessions. It turns out the Network had mostly replaced government officials and influential members of society, hoping they would be good influences on the general public. The city is every conspiracy theorist’s nightmare come true.

Gary, Andy, Steven, and Sam spend the night sleeping in shifts by one of many communal fire pits that have sprung up around the city. Gary has second watch. About forty-five minutes in, he sees a group of people pass by carrying computers.

“What’re you doing with those?” he calls out to them. 

The group stops, surprised to hear an unafraid voice in the darkness and the smoke. They huddle for a moment, then one of them sets his stack of laptops on the ground and walks over to Gary.

“Name’s Charles Adeyemi,” he says, sticking out his hand.

Gary stands and shakes the man’s hand. “Gary King,” he says.

“How much do you know about what’s going on?” Adeyemi asks.

Gary shrugs. “Not much. Bunch of aliens replaced a shitload of people with robots full of blue stuff to try and make the human race shape up. And you know, yeah, they sped up our information technology, but that doesn’t mean you need to start throwing out computers! They shut down the blanks and left the planet, What’re they gonna do, start blowing up everything they gave us from some spaceship?” He pauses. “Actually, they might do that. I don’t think they like us very much. Good idea, man.” 

He takes his cellphone out of his pocket and throws it on the ground, then stomps to pieces. Adeyemi stares at him.

“What? It’s the same thing you’re doing,” Gary says.

“They don’t work anymore,” Adeyemi says. “Cell phones, computers, television. Even fuckin’ traffic lights. Everything’s been shut off.”

“Oh. Huh. Bastards. I guess that makes sense though.”

After a moment of silence, Adeyemi says, “I’m going to need you explain to me how the fuck you know more than anyone I’ve talked to since the lights went out.”  
______

“Where are we going, Gary?” Andy says, jogging a few steps to catch up with him. 

“To see if my apartment’s still there,” Gary replies.

“We just did that. It’s rubble.”

“Jesus, Andy. Stop complaining! There’s only like four blocks left.”

Andy gives up on questions. The usually bustling London is full of wanderers, many still unable to process what has happened, staggering around like zombies. Gary King, for once, is one of the less delusional people around. Once he and Andy parted ways from Sam and Steven, it was full steam ahead to this mystery location.

Gary stops next to a blue compact car, a Toyota from the late nineties, and one of the few vehicles around with only superficial damage. He pulls a set of keys out of his coat pocket and unlocks the car, then checks the boot. He grins. Andy looks in the boot as well. There’s bottled water and a blanket. A smallish backpack contains some imperishable food. Andy is suddenly aware of the empty feeling in his stomach and takes out some beef jerky.

“Alright, whose car is this and where did you get the keys?” he asks.

“This guy I met last night told me I could use it,” Gary says, getting in the driver’s seat.

Andy, still skeptical, gets in next to him. “Why?”

Gary starts the car. “I gave him the details on what happened with the aliens.”

“But why’d he give you his car?”

“I told him that I’ve got a mum in Birmingham that I don’t know what’s happened to, and you have a wife and kids somewhere that you don’t know what’s happened to,” Gary says, grabbing a piece of the jerky and pulling out onto the road.

“But why – headlights!”

“What?”

“Turn the fuckin’ headlights on, Gary, or you’ll run somebody over in all this bloody smoke!”

“Al _right._ ”

“Why’d the guy give you his car?”

Gary’s grin is back. “He said I knew more about what’s going on than anybody he’d talked to, and that we deserved to find our families after saving the human race from being conquered by aliens. Where’s your wife and munchkins?”

Andy blinks. They had saved the human race, hadn’t they? “Uh, Stafford.”

“Right. Birmingham’s on the way there; we’ll stop by Mum’s first.”

For the first time since they left Newton Haven, Andy feels a twinge of hope. He looks at the idiot in the driver’s seat and realizes that somehow the tables have turned, and now he’s the one in debt to Gary fucking King. Or at least they’re even now. Either way, it’s an emotional moment. “Gary, I don’t know what to – “

“Get out of the fuckin’ road, you stupid cunts!” Gary shouts, honking at a trio of old people who promptly speed up their hobbling until they reach the pavement. “What were you saying?”

“Never mind.”

The two men find themselves increasingly comfortable with each other over course of the drive. Each really is the best friend the other has ever had, and they remember why. But despite the regained comradery, it doesn’t feel like old times. Both would agree that that’s probably a good thing.  
______

Gary’s mum is dead, and it’s really very sad.

They have to walk the last few miles from Birmingham to Stafford. When they get there, they find that Andy’s wife and kids barely have a scratch on them, and neither does his mother-in-law. Her house is more or less alright too. Andy’s wife, Julia, looks slightly confused as she is introduced to Gary. The kids love the watered down version of the story of the Five Musketeers and the Golden Mile. Andy is so happy to have his family back that he barely registers Gary growing quieter and more distant as the evening goes on.

That night, Gary lays awake on Andy’s wife’s mother’s sofa. They have accomplished their mission. Gary’s mum is dead for real, and Andy is back where he belongs. This was as far as he had planned. Saving the world from alien invasion apparently didn’t translate to insight on… hardly anything at all. Twenty-two years ago he had failed to finish the Golden Mile, and failed to begin his life. Now, after his second failure, he has a chance to start again. But start what, exactly? Somehow it was even less clear now what he was supposed to do than it was when he was eighteen. 

He wants a fucking drink.

Gary swings his legs off the couch and stands up. He can't have a drink, and he can't stay here. And Andy's mother-in-law's blankets are itchy as shit.

He leaves the house before dawn, taking the backpack full of supplies he and Andy had kept when they abandoned Adeyemi’s car. Andy’s mother-in-law has shelves full of canned shit in her garage, so it isn’t like Gary is leaving them to starve. And there was water in there too, right? Yeah. There totally was. Those guys would be fine.

______

Gary loses track of how long he’s been walking, or how far. Early on, his journey is stopped for he doesn’t know how many days (it feels like years) after the morning when he has a seizure. Afterwards he lies on his side like he remembers they told him to and thinks, _Shit. MotherFUCKING shit._

Soon, he vomits. When he feels able, Gary gets up and moves to a shady area, then lies on his side again. Later on, after Acute Withdrawal Round Two is over, he is grateful that it happened while he still had plenty of bottled water. Puking dehydrates the shit out of a person, he remembers they told him at the hospital, so thanks be to Adeyemi for all this fuckin’ rain. At least this time Gary’s not coming off drugs as well. And he didn’t just try to kill himself, unless he counts smashing Blank Gary’s head. There turns out to be a surprising amount of upsides to his time spent puking, wanting to puke, and hallucinating in the woods.

When Gary is back on his feet, he travels on for a long time until he eventually comes across a small lake in a wooded area, and becomes distinctly aware of how bad he smells. After checking that no one’s around to steal his clothes and backpack, he strips down to his boxer shorts and wades into the water, cursing how cold it is.

Once his body adjusts to the temperature, he dunks his head under the water… and is amazed by the amount of junk he sees. Judging by the amount of computers (mostly older desktops) at the bottom of the lake, he must be relatively close to civilization. Gary is about to come up for air when a glimmer catches his eye. It can’t be what he thinks it is... but how cool would it be if it was?

He swims over to what he’s pretty sure is the right area of the lake, then takes a gulp of air and swims down. Down until he can see it clearly; among the abandoned computers, wedged between some rocks, is a sword. God, it’s beautiful. He swims back to the surface for air, contemplating how to get it. It looks like it’s in there pretty tight, and he has no way of knowing how long it has been at the bottom of this lake. It might have rusted to the rocks so that it’s stuck and useless. Not that Gary’s entirely sure what he would use it for. Maybe he’ll run into a bear or something.

When he gets to the bottom of the lake again, Gary reaches out and tries to wiggle the sword a little, to see just how stuck it is. It doesn’t budge. Jesus, is it fucking _in_ a rock somewhere down there? Gary is now even more determined to get the sword. He grits his teeth, plants his feet on the rocks the sword is wedged between, grabs the hilt, and pulls with all his might. His momentum propels him backwards and he starts to float to the surface – the sword slid out as if the rocks were melted butter. Well, fuck. That was a lot easier than he had thought it was going to be.


	2. Caliber-ation

The days after Gary gets the sword (he feels like he should name it, but he can’t think of anything good) are largely uneventful. He half expects a dragon, or at least some vengeful blanks, to show up so he can christen the blade in its blood, or their ink. He ends up spending a lot of time dueling plants and practicing his quick draw.

Four days after his fruitful swim, Gary can’t find a good place to set up camp. He stops to rest and come up with a plan and finds that he has a lot less water than he remembered. He recalls hearing a stream earlier and treks back through the forest to find it. To Gary’s surprise, when he gets back there the first thing he sees is a brown horse tied to a tree. Someone is already setting up camp by the stream, pitching a blanket tent. The someone is a woman. A blonde woman. A _fit_ blonde woman. Holy fuck, it’s Tracy Benson of the Marmalade Sandwich.

“Holy fuck!” Gary exclaims. “Tracy Benson of the Marmalade Sandwich!”

Tracy Benson stops pitching her tent (she’s much better at it than Gary, who attempted a tent twice and then just took to sleeping under trees with thick foliage when it rained) and looks up. She has ditched the school girl skirt for trousers, and is wearing a coat over what Gary thinks is still the uniform shirt. Tracy’s only reaction to him is to sigh and go back to setting up her camp.

Gary walks a few steps toward her. Maybe she didn’t recognize him. “It’s me, Gary King! Remember, you snogged me at The Mermaid to collect my DNA?”

The tent finished, Tracy turns to him and crosses her arms over her chest. “And then you got the whole town blown up. Of course I remember you. Gary King, of the humans.”

“Wait – I did get the whole town blown up. How are you still around? Are all the blanks still around?”

Tracy flinches. “We’re not really _blank_ , you know. I’m not just a copy of Tracy Benson. I have her basic personality, her body, and some of her memories, but I’m my own person. I’m doing things she never did.” She sighs. “And yeah, all of us that were functioning when the Network left are still around. It just took us a while to get back on our feet.”

Gary looks around, trying to spot blanks hiding behind trees, waiting to ambush him. He’s glad he’s been working on his quick draw. “Where are the rest of you?”

Tracy shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“What, you’re not all building a perfect forest community together?” That makes Gary realize something. His face falls. Before Tracy can respond, he asks, “How far am I from Newton Haven?”

“About a day and a half’s walk that way.” Tracy points the direction Gary was headed before he turned back to find the stream.

Gary sits on the ground. He’s doing it again. He thought he was moving forward with his life, but it turns out he’s still trying to go back to Newton Haven. He puts his head in his hands.

Tracy unfolds her arms. “You’re not trying to go there, then?”

Gary looks up at her. “Why would I be trying to go there?”

“I don’t know; still living in the past?”

“Fuck you! I got over that! You were there when I ripped the head off the blank younger me and smashed it! That was fucking symbolic!” Gary falls backwards onto the ground. “I was really going to start again, but it’s like I’m fucking programmed to go back and stay in Newton Haven forever. I might as well go the rest of the way there and live in the ruins.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” Tracy says. She sits down next to him, cross-legged. She tugs her shirt down the same way Gary used to pull down his sleeves to make sure they covered the entirety of his arms. He sits back up. “I actually was programmed to live in Newton Haven forever, and I’m not. None of us – the blanks – are. If we can do it, so can you.”

Gary looks at the sky. It seems like it might rain. 

“Seems like it might rain,” Tracy says.

Gary looks at her. “That was pretty motivational, actually.”

“What, me making a soft prediction on the weather?”

“No, being programmed to live in Newton Haven but not doing it. Good point.”

“Thanks.”

“But why’d you leave them?”

Tracy looks at the ground. “Do you know what’s happening to the rest of us?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be asking, would I?”

“But you didn’t ask tha – never mind. We all started out together when we reactivated. We knew London must have suffered less structural damage than Newton Haven, and thought since it obviously has a lot more people, we could disappear into the masses and pass as humans… It didn’t happen. You lot can tell now, and most people treat us like shit anywhere we go. I didn’t even stay with the group all the way to London. I got sick of it.”

“What happened?” The blanks do what they’re supposed to do, and it seems like even most people would put up with shit at least for the walk from Newton Haven to London. Pete didn’t stand up to his bully for decades. Something extra must have happened to Tracy for her to leave her group.

“I just told you what happened. I got sick of how humans were treating us.”

Gary changes tactics. “Where’d you get the horse?”

A pause, then, “Alright, a man tried stab me through the stomach when I got a bit to too close to his property for comfort. I dodged and he sliced me a bit, but it made me so angry that I knocked him out and stole his horse.”

Gary laughs. “I thought you were supposed to be a perfect member of society! That’s theft and assault.”

Tracy can’t help but look a bit pleased with herself. “Humans are terrible influences. I blame you personally, Gary King.”

“Thanks. But fuckin’ hell, Tracy – “

“Not Tracy,” Not Tracy says. “I’m making a completely fresh start. I’m abandoning everything about my old life. Including being a slice of bread in the fucking Marmalade Sandwich.”

“You make that sound like such a bad thing! It’s not like you were stale bread you forgot you picked up at the shop and left in your car for a couple months –“

“Oh my god.”

“You were like a fucking… baguette! A slice out of a baguette. That’s good shit. It’s more than I had going on when the world ended.”

“That’s not much of a compliment. Neither of us had anything worth anything outside Newton Haven,” Not Tracy says. Gary internally agrees.

They sit, looking at the sky some more. The first scattered drops of rain fall, but neither of them mentions it.

“Why are you carrying that sword on your back?” asks Not Tracy. “It’d be much easier to get it out if you had a scabbard on your belt.”

“Looks cooler this way though, doesn’t it?” Gary replies. “And figuring out how to make a scabbard with the materials I could find would have taken way too fucking long. This harness thing was the closest I could get in a reasonable amount of time.”

The corner of Not Tracy’s mouth twitches upward. “It does look pretty cool.”

“Looks fucking badass,” Gary mutters. Then at normal volume, “Where are you headed, anyway?”

“Don’t know. Not London, not Newton Haven. You?”

“Same.”

Not Tracy nods at the sky. The rain is light and steady now. She moves to the opening of her tent, protected from the elements by cloth and the foliage of the tree branches above. She motions for Gary to join her, and he does, gratefully. Their shoulders touch as they sit beside each other in the front of the tent.

“So what should I call you, since you’re not being Tracy Benson?” Gary asks.

“Why would you need to call me anything?”

“Well, I can’t just think of you as Not Tracy. Come on, you ditched your old name and didn’t pick a new one?”

“I’m still thinking it over.”

Gary rolls his eyes. “What’s the top contender, then?”

After a moment, Not Tracy answers, “I like Gwen.”

After a moment, Gary says, “I like Gwen too.”

Gwen lies on her back in the tent, as if she’s bored of watching the rain. “I don’t care whether or not you like it, but I’ll let you know if I change my mind.”

“Are you saying we should go together?”

“Go where?”

“Don’t know. Not London, not Newton Haven.”

“I was saying you can share my tent tonight, since you don’t seem to have one and it’s raining.”

Gary takes off his sword harness and backpack and lies on his back in the tent next to her. “Thanks.”

“Just to be clear, there was no sexual connotation of any kind in that invitation.”

Gary rolls his eyes. “I _knew_ that. I’ve got good intuition about whether or not people are making sexual invitations.”

As he drifts off to sleep, he realizes he hasn’t eaten anything since noon, and he’s going to be really hungry in the morning. He wonders if Gwen has any food, or if he’s going to have to share with her. Just before unconsciousness absorbs him, he hears her say, “We could go on together too, if you want. Even though that’s not what I was talking about before.”

______

By summer, Gary is decent at fishing. Not the best in the area (that’s One-Eyed Dave), but definitely decent. Sometimes he gets enough fish to go into one of the nearby villages and trade some of them. The first time he traded he got his hat (his really cool hat) instead of “literally anything else,” and Gwen said she didn’t “even understand why bloody humans have brains at all when you don’t even use them.” Gary still believes it was a good decision on his part.

Gary likes to think that this new lifestyle helps him make better choices. Most of the time he’s fairly sure sobriety isn’t the worst thing that has ever happened to him. He gets restless, but it’s better than how he used to get. Fishing provides time for contemplation. For planning. For figuring things out. For the first time in a long time, he can do that sober and come out the other side feeling more or less alright. Gary thinks that may be a sign that he has finally grown up for real.

He has caught one fish and is going for his second when he sees the four men watching him from across the lake. Gary considers putting on his coat, or at least his long-sleeved shirt. The scars on his wrists and forearms are hard to miss, and even now that a lot more of the general population displays prominent scars and tattoos since the Big Smoke, the source of Gary’s is still pretty obvious. He forces himself to keep doing what he’s doing. If the four start coming towards him, he has plenty of time to get his coat and sword. His stuff is only a few feet behind him. No need to look back at it.

Even from this distance, Gary can tell the men aren’t from any of the nearby villages. Still, he can’t shake the feeling that he has seen them before. As they start to walk toward him along the edge of the lake, he realizes who they are. The world goes silent. Gary drops his fishing pole and walks quickly to retrieve his extra clothing and his sword. Don’t run. Don’t run. There’s no reason to run, so don’t do it.

A voice calls from behind him, “Gary!”

Gary faces the voice. It’s from Blank Oman. Well, it’s from the young Blank Oman. Gary wonders if he’s met the older model. 

It’s not just Oliver. The boys are all there, walking as confidently as they used to walk through the streets of Newton Haven (Blank Pete with less assurance than the others, but that just adds to the déjà vu.) Their clothes are in various states of disrepair and they have blue scratches and discolorations from either fights or accidents. They all look so incredibly happy to see him. Gary can’t look at them. He grabs his fishing pole and dented lunch pail-turned-tackle box, and starts to walk quickly towards the woods.

“Gary!”

“Gary, wait!”

The four blanks run in front of him and block his path. 

“What do you want? How did you find me?” Gary demands.

“Um, which one first?” asks Blank Pete.

Gary thinks for a second, then repeats, “How did you find me?”

Blank Steven shrugs. “Mostly guessing, asking around.”

Blank Oman adds, “It wasn’t easy.”

“We started looking for you back in December,” says Blank Andy. “We fuckin’ trekked through snow.”

“That’s partly why it took so long,” says Blank Steven.

Blank Oman nods. “Poor planning on our part.”

“The result of asking, ‘What would Gary King do?’” says Blank Steven, grinning.

Gary stares at them. “Why? Why did you come looking for me?”

Their faces fall, elation turning to confusion. The four exchange looks. 

“We, uh, we belong with you,” says Blank Andy. “Don’t we?”

Gary feels as though his heart has suddenly become incredibly dense and is weighing him to the ground, keeping him from bolting.

Blank Oliver steps in, seeing that Gary isn’t sold on the concept. “We didn’t feel like we fit in with the rest of our kind. The humans in London mostly treated us like shit. We don’t have any family or other friends –“

“Besides you,” says Blank Pete.

“Besides you,” says Blank Oliver. “So we had to go looking for you, didn’t we?”

“Come on, Gary,” says Blank Steven. “Without you, there’s something missing. You’re our – our fearless leader, don’t you remember?”

Gary takes a few steps back, shaking his head. “I’m not your fearless leader. Blank Gary was your fearless leader. The original versions of you got on just fine without me, so I’m sure you can get on just fine without him.”

“It’s not the same and you know it,” says Blank Andy. “You can’t just dismiss us. Like you said back in the World’s End, there’s only one Gary King, and we spent months searching for him. And we know there’s only one Andrew Knightley and one Steven Prince and one everybody else. We’re not them. Honestly, I don’t think we entirely know who we actually are yet. But we know we belong together, as a group.”

“The Five Musketeers,” whispers Gary. He’s not sure if this is a nightmare or a fantasy come to life.

“Uh, there were three musketeers,” corrects Blank Oman.

“Four if you count D’artagnan,” adds Blank Pete.

Gary takes another step back from the young replicas of his friends. “I think you should go.”

That’s too much for Blank Andy. “Did you not hear when we said we’ve been traveling since December?” he says. “When we were figuring out what to do with our lives, this was the only thing we were sure would have some significance. You can’t just send us away like that doesn’t mean anything, like you don’t care what happens to us! For fuck’s sake, Gary, we were basically programmed to love you!”

This isn’t what he wanted at all. This was never what he wanted. It’s like he was given three wishes, and he used one to get his friends to want to be around him again, but the wording of the wish wasn’t specific enough and this is the ironic twist. “Please don’t do this to me,” Gary says, his voice cracking embarrassingly.

They look surprised to see him so hurt, and a bit confused. It dawns on Gary that the only time these four have seen him with their own eyes was at the World’s End. They had seen him fearlessly save the human race. Of course they thought he could save them. Oh, fuck it. Blank Andy’s right. He can’t just send them away.

Gary takes a deep breath before once again addressing the boys in front of him. “I’m sorry. I don’t – this is weird. I’ll think of something to do about it. I bet you’re fucking starving, yeah?”

The four nod, clearly skeptical of his sudden change in tone.

“Right. We’ll drop this fish off, then I’ll get you some proper food at the pub in town. Come on.”

______

As they approach the shack, Blank Oliver whispers to Gary, “Isn’t that Tracy Benson of the Marmalade Sandwich?”

Gary shakes his head vigorously, knowing Gwen can detect anyone saying the name Tracy and/or Benson within about a five kilometer radius. He whispers back, “Sort of. Don’t call her that.”

When she notices them, Gwen stops her work in the garden. She’s trying to piece together what’s going on and why, and Gary can tell she doesn’t like whatever conclusions she’s reaching.

“Holy shit,” whispers Blank Steven, a hint of jealousy in his voice, “I can’t believe you married a slice from the Marmalade Sandwich.”

“ _Jesus_ , Steven, I’m not _married_. Now just wait here for like five minutes and then we’ll go.” Gary speeds up his walk towards the shack. “Gwen! I’m back!”

“I can see that.”

“Mind if I talk to you inside for a minute?”

“Yeah, I think that would be a good idea.”

Once inside, Gwen folds her arms and waits for an explanation.

“They just came out of the fucking woods, alright?” exclaims Gary. “They looked for me for like six months.”

“Are you sure you weren’t looking for them?”

“No! When would I have even had time to do that?”

Gwen looks at the ceiling and rubs her arms. “You’re not going to try and go… rebuild Newton Haven or something?”

“That’d be fucking stupid,” Gary says. He thought he had demonstrated by now that he didn’t live in the past anymore, but maybe he hadn’t. Maybe she was always worried that he was going to run off in the middle of the night to delusionally try and finish the Golden Mile again. “Come on, you know by now I don’t live in the past anymore.”

“You did name the horse after the drum machine from the Sisters of Mercy.”

“Oh, just because I care about fuckin’ artistic legacy and want the name Doktor Avalanche to live on in some way, that means I’m living in the past?” 

Doktor Avalanche is frequently rented out to farmers in the area, often for actual currency instead of crops. This gives Gary and Gwen more freedom in business transactions, and has resulted in many villagers resenting Gwen’s presence less than they would otherwise.

Gwen sighs. “Alright, fine, I remember the big speech you did about that. Sorry. I just wasn’t expecting to see those four ever again. They were only functioning for a few days before I left the group, so I think I forgot they existed.”

Gary had had a hallucination of the four young replicas of his friends while going through withdrawal in the woods. Then he had forgotten about them until they had appeared on the other side of the lake. He explains this and the rest of the situation to Gwen now, and she takes it pretty well. She understands that this weird new development isn’t his doing. She’s too understanding, really… much like the Blank Musketeers are too eager to become his friends.

“The Blank Andy said they were programmed to be with me, for us to be together as a group…” Looking at Gwen, Gary suddenly and vividly recalls kisses with ulterior motives in the Mermaid. “Are you programmed to be attracted to me?” Gary asks, not sure what he should do if the answer is yes.

Gwen blinks a few times in disbelief, then laughs in his face. “Fuck you. Just because I was ordered to collect your DNA via seduction one time – ugh, you’re ridiculous. And, you know, those boys out there aren’t really programmed to be your friends either. They’re just programmed to be like the people your friends were. That’s why they think you can help them, and they belong with you and all that other stuff. Don’t freak out about it.”

Gary is immensely comforted by this, and he knows he absolutely would be freaking the fuck out if he was alone right now. Not being single and a hundred percent free isn’t as hellishly terrible as he had previously assumed. But he plays it cool. “Nope. Not buying it. Your intense attraction to me is clearly ingrained deep into your code.”

“Who says I’m attracted to you at all?”

“Nobody,” Gary says, and walks up to put his arms around her waist. He lowers his voice, “But if you aren’t, then the sex we’ve been having for the past few months must have really sucked for you.”

Gwen laughs again and pushes him off. “The only thing that really sucks around here is this attempt at chatting me up.”

“Hey, I was doing my best with the material at hand! And, uh, thanks? I think?”

“Go play with your friends. Just try and not to do anything incredibly stupid.”

“When have I ever done anything incredibly stupid?” Gary asks. He trips on his way out the door. Gwen pretends, unconvincingly, that she doesn't notice.

______

There are two pubs in the larger of the nearby villages, and one serves food. However, as Gary and the blanks are gruffly informed, the Fisherman’s Arms does not serve robots.

“These guys are alright though, Vinnie,” Gary says. “It’s cool; they’re with me. I can vouch for them.”

“Why the hell do you think your vouching for them means anything?” Vinnie says, his impressive glare focused on Gary. The four other villagers in the pub make sure that no newcomer is without a hostile stare. “Everybody knows your girl’s one of them. And all you ever drink here is fucking water.”

“Come on, just give them some stew.”

“Don’t have any stew.”

“You have stew every day!”

“Not today.”

“I can fuckin’ smell it!”

“What do you think you’re looking at?” rumbles the voice of Bill, who raises chickens and has a neck tattoo of a bloody axe, from across the pub.

Gary spins around. Bill has walked up to Blank Pete and is towering over him. Blank Pete is shaking like original Pete used to when Shane Hawkins would corner him in the hall. Before Shane wised up and only went after the smaller guy when his friends weren’t around. Gary’s right hand is itching, and he is suddenly very aware of the pressure of the sword on his back.

“N-nothing,” insists Pete. “Just looking around.”

Bill chuckles. “Just looking around, eh? You know, now that I’m having my own look ‘round at you, it’s reminding me of a real pressing question. Can you guess what that question is, blank boy?”

Peter shakes his head desperately, his eyes wide. Gary notices how tense Andy is next to him. The pub’s other human patrons have got up from their seats.

“I remember,” says Bill, “that one time I heard that you blanks don’t have blood like we do. That blue stuff in you is like ink, and if I was to pop your head off, it would be like smashing a pen. Now, I heard this from a fairly reputable source, but I just couldn’t quite bring myself to believe it. I’m the kind of man who has to see things with my own eyes, know what I mean?”

Gary steps between Pete and the larger man. He gives Bill a quick shove away from his friend. “Leave him alone.”

Bill narrows his eyes and shoves back, harder. “What are you going to do about it, King?”

“You don’t want to find out.”

“Oh, I think I do.”

Gary is quick drawing his sword, but not as fast as Bill is with his knife. He thrusts to stab Gary in the stomach, but is sent reeling back with a punch to the head from Steven. One of the other humans runs at Andy, who clotheslines him. Another man starts grappling with Oliver. 

Bill pushes Steven against the wall. He and Gary circle each other. Bill holds his knife in front of him, poised to strike. Gary hopes he isn’t somehow broadcasting the fact that he has no idea what the fuck he’s doing. His only sword fighting opponents before now have been plants. But he can’t think about that now. He has to focus. He remembers the pain of a cold blade piercing his skin. He remembers seeing the knife fall and watching his blood flow out of his body as the world began to go dark. 

Death spared Gary King once before, and it’s not going to take him today.

When Bill lunges at him again with the knife, Gary is ready, and he knocks the weapon out of the other man’s hand. With the hilt of his sword, he smites Bill over the head, sending him falling to the ground. He presses the blade against the large man’s jugular, and then looks up to see how the others are doing.

Gary has never been so glad to see blanks doing well in a fight. Oman managed to somehow beat his attacker unconscious. He, Steven, and Pete have teamed up against a man even bigger than Bill who is swinging at them with a cricket bat. While the other two distract the giant, Steven wrestles the bat from his grip and delivers a knockout blow to the head. Sure that the others don’t need his help, Gary scans the room for Andy. He finds him just in time to catch Andy execute a sweet elbow drop on his opponent, unquestionably finishing the fight.

“Fuck yeah, Andy!” Gary shouts.

Andy gets up and brushes off his jacket. “Fuck yeah,” he says.

Gary looks down at Bill on the floor. “You want to try and pop any of these guys' heads off again?”

“No,” Bill says in a significantly higher pitched voice than he had used when speaking earlier. 

“So you don’t have any reason to pick fights with robots anymore, do you?”

“No.”

“Or the humans who happen to hang out with them, right?”

“No,” says Bill. He swallows, and adds, “Sir.”

_Sir?_ Fuck that. He moves his blade away from the man’s neck. “Get out.”

As Gary sheathes his sword, he hears Steven and Pete start to laugh. Vinnie’s wide eyes and dropped jaw are definitely comical, but Gary’s mind is too full of other things to appreciate them. The adrenaline of the fight. The support of good companions. An honorable victory that will no doubt be the talk of the village by sundown. He wonders if the pub at the other end of town has an anti-blank policy as well.

“Five waters, please, Vinnie,” Gary says, taking a seat at the bar. The boys follow suit. “And how about some of that stew? My friends here are weary travelers who require a hearty repast after their long journey.”


End file.
